Saturday, November 21, 2015

Clean Room #2 - A Review

Freelance journalist Chloe Pierce lost her fiance after he committed suicide shortly after becoming a devotee of self-help guru Astrid Mueller. Convinced that Mueller is hiding something even before uncovering a trail of similarly broken people who died after giving themselves over Mueller's organization, Pierce arranges an interview and forces a confrontation. And now she is about to be given a glimpse at The Clean Room...

It is not astonishing that Gail Simone - the queen of dark comic comedy - should write so chilling and thrilling a graphic novel as Clean Room. What is astonishing is that she did not write such a series sooner. Simone has dealt with disturbing subject matter before but never with such stark realism or coolness. It's unclear precisely where this series is going after two chapters but I would favorably compare it to any season of American Horror Story.

Of course a graphic novel is only as good as its artist and Simone has a perfect partner in Jon Davis-Hunt. His style would not look out of place in a mainstream superhero book, with smoothly defined characters and realistic proportions. When it comes time to depict the monsters under the bed, however, Davis-Hunt is more than capable of rendering a suitably stylized demon.